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Christo & Jeanne-Claude (Artists); Volz, Wolfgang (Photographer) & Various Contributors : Christo: The Gates: Project For Central Park, New York City

Hugh Lauter Levin Associates, Inc., New York City, NY, 1981

ISBN 0883630036

First Edition / First Printing. Fine in No Dust Jacket, As Issued. 104 pages. Book-length account on the project as a "work in progress". The true First Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions, particularly the 2004 Reissued Facsimile Edition (with the same ISBN) and the book on the completed project. Published in a small and limited one-time-only print run as a softcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. An austerely elegant production by Christo: Oversize-volume format. Pictorial softcovers with titles on the cover and spine, as issued. Art by Christo. They are his original drawings for the planned project BEFORE its actual realization. Interspersed with ground-level and aerial photographs by Wolfgang Volz of Central Park. Printed on pristine-white, thick coated stock paper in the United States to the highest standards. In publisher's original plastic wrappers. Without DJ, as issued. Presents "Christo: The Gates: Project For Central Park, New York City". Their most ambitious masterpiece, still a "work in progress" at the time of publication. The now-legendary "wrap" installation project, as conceived through the meticulous sketch-designs by Christo Vladimirov Javacheff. "First conceived in 1979, Christo and Jeanne-Claude's vision of 7500 gates, each of them sixteen feet high, that tread Central Park's twenty-three miles of footpaths, will transform Central Park. Orange saffron fabric panels will hang above the ground blowing in the wind and delighting the public walking beneath with a warm glow of translucent color and free-floating grace. The project will remain for sixteen days" (Publisher's blurb). The "wrap", their monomaniacal, signature technique/medium was also their statement, their "medium-is-the-message" way of "transforming common objects and places into strange and evocative presences. Christo studied the way the Old Masters used drapery to simultaneously conceal and reveal the human form" (Calvin Tomkins). Christo's masterly draftsmanship is stunning, but is understandably overshadowed by the projects themselves. Because the finished work is, by design, ephemeral (once installed, they are viewable for a limited, "one-time-only" period), site-specific (you have to be there to see it, often aerially), and destructible (nothing is ever preserved after the event), what we do have left for posterity are these sketches and Wolfgang Volz's photographs: The concept and the record. An absolute "must-have" title for Christo collectors. This copy is very boldly and beautifully signed in orange pen-marker on the title page by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. The orange pen is an exact color match of "The Gates" saffron fabric material. This title is now collectible. As far as we know, this is the only such double-signed copy of the First Edition/First Printing available online, is still in the publisher's original plastic wrappers, and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright, a beauty. Please note: Precedes and should NOT be confused with all other subsequent editions, particularly the 2003 Reissued Facsimile Edition (with the same ISBN) and the book on the completed project. A rare signed copy thus. 38 color plates. Two of the most brilliant artists of the 20th century. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER CHRISTO TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0883630036.

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